After an eventful wedding in San Jose, my family and I started on the 4 hour drive to Yosemite National Park on July 18, 2017. However, a couple days beforehand we heard about a wildfire that had started to develop around the area. We took this with a grain of salt as we assumed that these fires happen all the time out here in California. We did not think it would be a problem at all during our trip.
We had no idea what was coming.
Upon driving near the park, we noticed how the mood of the area was very bland due to the unusual color of the park. Due to fires around the area, the sky was lit with a musty yellow.
We were not going to let a fire ruin our pre-planned trip, so we continued on the road to get to our first tourist spot: Glacier Point View.
Glacier Point View is one of the most iconic viewpoints, overlooking Half Dome, Yosemite Valley, and the High Sierra. From my experience, it is about a 45 minute drive to get to the viewpoint starting from the park base. The drive up is very difficult due to the awful road conditions. During the winter time, many cross country skiers hike up the mountain and get to this view after a hike of about 10.5 miles. Unfortunately, the road to get to Half Dome will be closed for the entire year of 2021 to improve the road conditions.
Due to the fires, our view was mainly foggy due to all the smoke that was coming from the fire. The view was still very impressive and was a cool experience to start our trip. One foreigner from Europe, visiting most of the National Parks in Western America, said that it was one of the best views he has ever seen! However, the fire smoke was ruining the view and everyone's moral was very low.
Unfortunately, we already drove all the way out to Yosemite and had a hotel booked for 2 nights. We decided that it was too late to cancel the trip. Upon arriving at our hotel at night, we noticed how dark it was due to the scarcity of light. My parents came back from the hotel check-in and told us that their was no electricity at the Yosemite facilities due to the fires (Just Wonderful!). They even told us that we could cancel our hotel without any charge (We are two hours away from the nearest hotel). So we decided to stay at our hotel and to deal with the current circumstances.
We enter out room (which was actually pretty nice) and get everything settled. The water still works in the room because it is not powered by the electricity. So when taking our showers, we had to use our portable chargers, which have a flashlight feature in them, to create light in our bathroom.
Overall, I won't ever forgot this trip because it brought a whole new different level of vacation that I had never experienced before.
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